A Density of Souls (28 page)

“Hey,” he said.

On the other end, Stephen cleared his throat. “Hello.”

Jordan could tell he was still in bed and possibly hung over. “Listen, I’m going out of town for a while. My parents used to rent this house in Florida, just outside of Destin,” he said, and then plunged on, “I thought I might go there for a few days. Clear my head.”

“Okay. Have a good time.” Sarcasm.

Jordan yanked the rental agreement from the fax machine. The bottom half caught in the tray and tore off.

“Shit . . .” Jordan cursed. “I want you to come with me.”

Stephen didn’t say anything, which unnerved Jordan enough to say more. “I don’t want to talk about it . . .” Jordan started. He snorted, annoyed with himself. “I didn’t sleep last night, Stephen.”

The top half of the rental agreement now curled on Roger’s desk.

“Gulf Sun Rentals” promised Jordan 231 Dune Alley Lane for two days, starting tonight. Jordan scrutinized the fax’s slightly blurred text, trying to get a bearing on his motive.

“When?” Stephen asked, his voice lower as if the trip had suddenly become a secret.

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“Tonight.”

“All right.”

“Okay. Good then.” Jordan’s tone was abruptly businesslike, proper.

“How does eight sound? It’s a four hour drive and . . .”

“Eight’s good. How long?”

“Four hours.”

“Jordan, how long are we going to stay?”

“A few days,” he mumbled.

“Eight o’clock, then,” Stephen said.

Jordan hung up the phone, propped his elbows on the desk, and clasped his forehead, kneading the knots of tension that had just formed in his skull.

Stephen slipped on a pair of boxers and found his mother on the third floor, squatting on the floor of the study. A pile of flattened cardboard boxes sprawled like a deck of cards on the floor next to her. She was leafing through a leather notebook.

“I’m going out of town for a few days,” Stephen said.

She nodded. Jeremy’s desk, which Stephen knew she had not touched in nineteen years, was now bare. His father’s Selectric typewriter sat in a cardboard box. With the exception of the quotations still plastered on the walls, the study looked nude.

“What are you doing?” Stephen asked.

“When I’m done, you can have it,” Monica said. She closed the notebook and dropped Jeremy’s collected works from June to December 1980 into the box.

“Have what?”

“This,” Monica said, waving at the room. Stephen noticed a glass of liquor on the windowsill. Absolut and Chambord Royal, his mother’s favorite. It was early, even for her. He wanted a sip. Monica bent down and stacked the books tumbled inside another box.

“We’ll go to Hurwitz Mintz and get new furniture. Once school starts, I think it’ll make a good study. Better than studying in your room.” She squinted at him, sluggishly thoughtful. “Or maybe Scan-dinavia if you want more modern stuff.”

“I study at the library,” Stephen pointed out.

Monica stood up, unapologetic. She was clearing away all evidence of his father for a reason she did not volunteer. He turned from the The Army of God

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doorway, headed downstairs. “You’re not supposed to drink before noon, Mom!” he yelled back over his shoulder.

“Who are you going with?” she asked.

“Jordan Charbonnet,” he shouted up the stairs. “Elise’s son!” Stephen slammed his bedroom door and retrieved a duffel bag from under the bed. He assembled some T-shirts and shorts as his mother stomped and thudded overhead, packing the remnants of his father’s life into boxes.

“Sorry about coffee,” Stephen apologized.

“That’s cool. What about tonight?” Meredith asked.

“Can’t.”

“Okay,” she said, slightly wounded.

She had called from her car. The tinny blare of the radio filled the silence. Trish had finally awakened her and ordered her to drop off some transfer forms at Tulane; she had either not noticed or decided to ignore the fact that Meredith had commandeered a hefty portion of her new prescription “diet pills”—speed intended to skyrocket the metabolism. And of course Meredith didn’t tell her mother that she would also be buying any books she could on psychotropic medication at the Tulane bookstore.

“I’m going out of town,” Stephen said matter-of-factly

“Where?” Meredith asked.

“Florida.”

“Cool. With your mom?” Meredith asked.

When Stephen didn’t answer immediately, Meredith felt a pang of nausea in her stomach. Her hand tightened on the cell phone and her foot slipped off the gas pedal, the odometer falling as she coasted down St. Charles Avenue.

“No, it’s kind of weird . . .”

“What’s weird?”

“Do you know Jordan Charbonnet? Brandon’s brother?”

Meredith sailed through a red light.

“Not really,” she mumbled, her head feeling airy, weightless.

“Is something wrong?” Stephen asked.

Meredith clamped the phone between her ear and shoulder and aligned the Acura with both hands on the steering wheel. No cops were in pursuit, thank God.

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“Isn’t he kind of a prick?” she asked.

“I guess I’ll find out,” Stephen said.

“I heard he was.”

“Well, he is Brandon’s brother,” Stephen admitted.

“You two messing around or something?”

Stephen didn’t answer. Meredith veered randomly onto a side street that she hoped would take her into Tulane’s campus. “Sorry. That was kind of crude . . .” she muttered.

“Uh-huh,” Stephen agreed, his voice gravelly. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

“I’ll give you my notebook if you still want to read it.”

She could hear the panic in her voice. She pulled the Acura into a parking space labeled FACULTY ONLY.

“All right, Meredith,” he said gently.

“Bye,” she said and hung up. She punched the steering wheel with one fist. The horn honked and she jumped. She inhaled deeply to quiet the storm of panic. Contrary to what she had thought, Jordan Charbonnet actually had the balls to go after Stephen.

Angela, she thought, focus on Angela. It’s all you can do.

At six-thirty, Monica decided to walk to the Charbonnet residence.

She rang the doorbell. No one answered. She looked over her shoulder and saw Roger’s Cadillac parked at the curb. A suitcase sat in the backseat.

The door opened and Jordan Charbonnet stood before her. She glanced at the car and then back at Jordan. “Is your mother home?”

“No,” Jordan answered.

“Where did she go?” Monica asked, as if she were asking the where-abouts of a murder suspect.

“We have no idea.”

Monica nodded. She looked up at him with humming rage. “You hurt Stephen, I’ll hurt you. Is that perfectly clear?”

Jordan said nothing, and Monica pivoted and strolled down the front steps with exaggerated dexterity.

“Meet me here,” Jordan said when Stephen answered.

“Why?”

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“Your mom just paid a visit.” He heard the sound of a door slamming. Stephen’s silence suggested to him that Monica had just entered the room. “Okay,” he said, and hung up.

At seven P.M., Elise Charbonnet drove her Ford Explorer through the tollbooth at the south end of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. On the passenger seat lay folded a map on which she had highlighted her route across twenty miles of lake to the north shore. Highway 190

would take her into Mandeville.

The .35 caliber revolver rattled in the glove compartment. She was ten miles down the causeway and only halfway across the lake when fat drops of rain tapped the windshield.

7

T
wo-Thirty-One Dune Alley was tucked behind a bank of storm-battered sand dunes. Standing on the back deck, Stephen could make out the distant glow of condominium high-rises marking the shore’s distant bend. The house was on one of the few empty stretches of beach. The night was windless and the Gulf was placid and black, swells lapping feebly against the sugary sand. Stephen understood why people loved the ocean: it was the farthest you could get.

He shut his eyes briefly, smelling salt air for the first time in years.

He was startled by the sound of Jordan setting two beer bottles onto the table behind him. He took a Corona from him with a nod of thanks. “How long since you’ve been here?”

“Last time we came down I was seventeen.” Jordan took his seat on one of the weathered benches behind Stephen.

“Is it like you remembered?”

“No,” Jordan said before downing half his Corona. “That’s a good thing, though. All I remember is noise. My parents fighting about how far we should drive for dinner. Brandon bitching and being put in time-out.” He put the bottle down and leaned back, out of Stephen’s line of vision. “I’ve always wanted to come back alone.”

“Alone?” Stephen asked.

“You know what I mean,” Jordan said easily. “Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

“Move first,” Stephen said.

“What?”

“Move. The way you’re sitting, with your back to the house. I can’t see you. You’re just a shadow.”

“Afraid of shadows?” Jordan teased.

Stephen snorted, still not turning. In truth, he was afraid of people The Army of God

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in shadow: the black silhouette of Greg Darby reaching for the light chord before hurtling him headlong into the bell; the featureless form of Jeff Haugh looming in the doorway of Madam Curie’s Voodoo Shop, saying that he had taken a job at Sanctuary just so he might run into Stephen again.

“I’ll stand then,” Jordan said, clearly. He crossed the deck and stood next to him. Stephen was acutely aware of the space between his left shoulder and Jordan’s right.

“Want to go swimming?” Jordan asked.

Stephen faced him, frowning and quiet.

“What?” Jordan asked.

“Exactly what are you doing, Jordan?”

“You don’t like it here?” Jordan asked.

“Don’t play stupid,” Stephen said, his voice accusatory. Jordan sighed and slumped against the deck rail. Stephen settled onto one of the benches, propping his beer between his bare feet.

“You didn’t have to come,” Jordan said.

“You really thought I’d say no?”

“I’m not a mind reader.”

“You’re not answering my question,” Stephen said, glaring. “I’m all out of stories, Jordan.”

“You didn’t have to tell me!” Jordan snapped, turning. He held his bottle in front of him like a weapon. “But when you left the bar, you knew I would follow you. And you knew I’d see the light go on inside the bell tower. You wanted me to follow you.”

“I don’t know where your brother is,” Stephen said.

“I don’t care!” Jordan barked.

Stephen’s eyes narrowed. Some fresh power in him was aroused by Jordan’s anger. “Do you want your picture back?” Stephen asked, his tone low and gruff. He rose from the bench. Jordan snorted a half laugh in response, which he tried to down with a slug of beer.

Stephen bounded down the steps to the beach. Then he halted, yelled, “Follow me,” to dare Jordan, then danced across the white sand toward the purr of the surf.

He could hear Jordan following him, grunting as his sneakers sank into the sand, then panting as he jogged to get closer.

“Just stop, all right?” Jordan cried out.

They had moved past the last house in the beachfront row and both of them stood several yards apart in darkness. Stephen faced him, 210

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waiting for an answer that Jordan would have to glean from a part of himself he rarely touched.

“You’re a witch,” Jordan finally told him.

“A what?”

“I bet it’s so easy for you to think you’re just the victim. I bet all of it’s easier to remember if you tell yourself it was just hatred. But it’s not. It’s more.” Jordan shook his head.

Stephen wanted to throttle him, slap him quiet in quickening rage.

“What was it then?” he spat.

Jordan sputtered, thought out loud. “Why didn’t he just find a quiet place and put the gun to his head? Why did he even have to bother with you, Stephen? Have you ever thought about what that meant—”

“I know what it meant!” Stephen shouted. “He wanted to destroy me. Break me. And then he realized what he’d done and that’s when he killed himself. Greg Darby didn’t want to die that night.” He bristled with anger. “He probably brought the gun because he was going to use it on me!”

“No,” Jordan said. His voice was calm and authoritative.

Stephen’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Jordan lifted his eyes to Stephen’s.

“You had power over him. You suggested something else . . . This other world outside the boundaries of what he knew . . .”

“This is fucking bullshit!” Stephen growled. He strode off across the sand. Jordan didn’t follow, but he raised his voice.

“You had power over him! That’s why he called you! That’s why he asked you to go with him. That’s why he wanted you to be there when he took his own life, because he wanted you to know what you had done to him!”

“He raped me!”

“I know, but why? Why not just kill you?”

Stephen stopped, his eyes useless against the black water. Anger hummed inside of him like an engine filling with fuel.

“You’re a witch, Stephen. You have a power over people you don’t even realize. It’s a curse.” Stephen was moving toward him now, but Jordan continued. “You killed Greg Darby without even lifting a hand.”

Stephen slammed into Jordan with so much force that Stephen could feel Jordan’s body slam into the sand and bounce. Before he had time to struggle, Stephen was rolling him over onto his stomach, pinning his wrists. His mouth opened in protest and Stephen saw The Army of God

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sand spill into his throat. He brought one knee between the back of Jordan’s legs, pushing it into the underside of his crotch. One hand pressed Jordan’s face deeper into the sand. Jordan tried to twist his neck beneath Stephen’s grip. Stephen’s other hand yanked the back of his shorts, pulling the waistband down.

As Stephen glimpsed the off-white skin of Jordan’s ass, Jordan screamed into the sand, a muffled, retching bellow, filled with enough panic and horror to unsaddle Stephen from his back.